Easter Island Day 5

After sleeping in, we made our way to explore Hanga Roa. Our first stop was mercado artisanal. There were lots of different stalls all selling similar moai and birdman themed products. We spent a fair bit of time going through each of the three rooms and then back again to look at specific stalls we had narrowed things down to for our moai statue. Unfortunately, the statue we liked was double the price of the others, and the owner wasn't willing to negotiate, so we left empty handed.

We walked through town towards the post office popping into little souvenir shops along the way just to check they didn't have a moai we liked. At the post office, we discovered that the passport stamp is now located at the tourism center. Good thing too, because the post office was closed anyway. We walked back from the center of town towards the coast to get our stamp. Along the way, we stopped at the boat pier where we saw some turtles our first day here. We were in luck! We saw about 5 or 6 or various sizes all in the little corner near the boats. It looked like they like eating the algae on the ropes.

After watching the turtles for a bit, we walked the short distance to the tourism center. Unfortunately, this was also closed, but was due to open back up in about ten minutes from our arrival, so we waited. I went back to the coast to watch more turtles at a different part of the beach while Allan hid in the shade from the high UV. When the center opened, we got our passports stamped and headed back to the hostel. We were feeling pretty sick: cough, sore throat, runny nose, so we stopped at the grocery store for some juice (vitamins and all that). We suspected it had something to do with the disgusting amount of mold in the room. Not wanting to spend any more time in there than necessary, we got ready to go for a hike.

We drove to the top of Rano Kau, the crater near the town, a couple days ago. We decided to take a path up the hill to the top. We got a little bit lost on the way, and had to wade through some tall plants along the way. Along the path, we also saw a lot of obsidian. We didn't think we were going to find any, but the whole mountain was full of it! We got some pretty good pieces and ended up with too many and had to put some down.

Once at the top, Allan wanted to go around the crater. We walked around the edge opposite the Orongo village. It was much farther than we expected and we were walking for a pretty long while. When we got to the far edge (further than we thought we would get), we got a picture with Motu Nui island and then made our way back to the start and back down the hill. The sun was starting to go down, but much like last night, the sky didn't change into the pretty colors it did from previous nights.

We got back to the hostel later than planned, and feeling pretty tired from the 15k hike (tired also because we weren't feeling great either). I made some quick dinner and we had showers before climbing into bed for our last night on Easter Island.Baca lagi